42 NEW AMERICAN ORCHARDISTV 



more inflexible ; their bark also becomes more thick and 

 rigid, and may therefore operate by compression ; and the 

 sap which before passed on uninterruptedly, is now retard- 

 ed in its progress; it accumulates and develops fruit buds, 

 and the tree falls into bearing. To effect this object by 

 artificial means, various modes have been adopted. 1st. By 

 ligatures, or ringing, or girdling ; variously termed decor- 

 tication or circumcision. 2d. By bending their branches, 

 or by continually shortening the extremities of the young 

 and growing wood. 3d. By subjecting them to a warm 

 and dry atmosphere. Or, lastly, by a combination of each 

 and every mode, as in the case of Chinese dwarf trees, and 

 the QuenouiJJes of the French, 



SUBS. 1st. GIRDLING, or DECORTICATION. Girdling, 

 decortication, ringing, or circumcision, as it is sometimes 

 variously called, consists in making two circular incisions, 

 quite round the limb, through the bark, at the distance 

 of about three eighths of an inch asunder, more or less, 

 according to the size and thriftiness of the tree; then 

 making a perpendicular slit, the ring of the bark is wholly 

 removed to the wood. 



Ringing, or decortication, is applicable to every kind 

 of fruit tree, and to the vine. Its operation is twofold. 

 1st. In the early production and abundance of blossom 

 buds which it induces ; or, 2d. In increasing the size of 

 the fruit and hastening its maturity, according to the sea- 

 son in which the operation is performed. 



When the design of decortication is the production of 

 blossom buds, the operation must be performed about the 

 last of June, or beginning of July. But when the object 

 to be obtained is the enlargement of the fruit and its more 

 early maturity, the operation must be deferred till just at 

 the time when the tree has come into full leaf in the spring. 



Mr. Knight, from an experience of fifty years in the prac- 

 tice, observes, that when the space from which the bark is 

 taken off, is too considerable, a morbid state of early ma- 

 turity is induced, and the fruit becomes worthless. The 

 same injurious effects he has always witnessed, whenever 

 the operation has been performed upon very young or very 

 small branches; for such become debilitated and sickly 

 long before the fruit can arrive at maturity. A tight liga- 



